Claims of virgin births in U.S. near 1 percent: study

(Reuters) - Nearly 1 percent of young women in a U.S. study
who have become pregnant claim to have done so as virgins,
according to a report in the Christmas edition of Britain's BMJ
medical journal.

The authors of "Like a virgin (mother)" - whose prose is
devoid of irony - say such scientifically impossible claims show
researchers must use care in interpreting self-reported
behavior. Fallible memory, beliefs and wishes can cause people
to err in what they tell scientists.

Based on interviews with 7,870 women and girls ages 15 to
28, 45 of the 5,340 pregnancies in this group through the years
- 0.8 percent - occurred in women who reported that they
conceived independent of men. The figure does not include
pregnancies that result from in vitro fertilization or other
assisted reproductive technology.

Each year, the BMJ Christmas edition publishes untraditional
science papers. In addition to the report on virgin pregnancies,
the latest BMJ includes papers on whether there is a local baby
boom nine months after home sports teams triumph (only a small
one, but statistically significant) and whether an apple a day
would keep the British doctor away (yes, saving about 8,500
lives in the United Kingdom each year, about as many as would
expanding the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs to everyone over
50).

For the study of putative virgin pregnancies, researchers at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed data
from the thousands of teenage girls and young women who took
part in the long-running National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent Health.

The girls were 12 to 18 years old when they entered the
study in the 1994-95 school year and were interviewed
periodically about their health and behavior over 14 years,
including via computer as a way to encourage them to be candid
when answering questions about their sexual history.

The 45 women and girls who became pregnant despite,
according to what they told interviewers, being virgins at the
time of conception differed in several ways from peers who
acknowledged that men had had a role in their procreation.

Of those who said they became pregnant as virgins, 31
percent also said they had signed chastity pledges; 15 percent
of nonvirgins who became pregnant said they had signed such
pledges, in which a girl vows not to have sex until she marries.

The 45 self-described virgins who reported having become
pregnant and the 36 who gave birth were also more likely than
nonvirgins to say their parents never or rarely talked to them
about sex and birth control. About 28 percent of the "virgin"
mothers' parents (who were also interviewed) indicated they
didn't have enough knowledge to discuss sex and contraception
with their daughters, compared to 5 percent of the parents of
girls who became pregnant and said they had had intercourse.

The ostensibly chaste mothers were also less likely to know
how to use condoms, according to the report. UNC biostatistician
Amy Herring and public health expert Carolyn Halpern led the
group.

The researchers found that although the mothers in question
were more likely to have boys than girls, and to be pregnant
during the weeks leading up to Christmas, neither similarity to
the Virgin Mary was statistically significant.